The United States Postal Service (USPS) operates a national mail and parcel delivery network including hundreds of major mail Processing and Distribution Centers (P&DCs) that process and forward mail pieces toward the destination address. The P&DCs process a tremendous volume of mail that may include hundreds of millions of letters and packages per day. The P&DCs employ automated processing equipment in the form of optical character readers, automated facer-cancellers, barcode sorters, and material handling systems. As a machineable mail piece is automatically processed in the P&DC national network, the destination barcode is used when the P&DC in possession of the mail piece decides where to send it next.
The USPS currently typically collects its delivery fee from the sender of an item through the use of postage stamps, a postage meter or a postage permit mark (used to charge against a permit postage account). However, the USPS does offer a reply mail service known as BUSINESS REPLY MAIL (BRM) that is frequently used for advertisement responses (e.g., magazine advertisement response cards) and customer reply mail (e.g., order fulfillment return envelopes). BUSINESS REPLY MAIL uses preprinted FIRST-CLASS MAIL pieces for which the business and not the customer pays for the return postage. The business interested in using the service applies for an advance deposit permit account and funds the account. The mail pieces (e.g., envelopes and postcards) are pre-addressed and marked with a BRM postage authorization. The USPS also offers volume discounts to businesses that receive a large quantity of such BRM mail pieces. Since the business does not pay the return postage unless the BRM mail piece is used, the business is not charged any postage for the printed BRM mail pieces that are discarded and never returned. Accordingly, the business does not have to waste postage by placing stamps on all of its reply mail.
Since the postage is charged to an advance deposit permit account that the business funds and maintains with the USPS, the business must maintain sufficient funds in that account relative to the BRM mail pieces that will be returned. A system for managing BRM accounts is described in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,131,572 B2, entitled Automatic Business Reply Mail Funding, issued Nov. 7, 2006 to Miller, et al. and incorporated herein by reference. The preprinted BRM mail pieces sent to the public then remain a liability since they can be placed in the mail at any time. Unfortunately, for publicly distributed BRM mail pieces, there may be many BRM mail pieces that would not normally be returned, but that might be placed in a mail collection box by a prankster.